Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Education, Work and US Leadership in the 21st Century

A few weeks ago, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) released The Work Ahead - Machines, Skills, and U.S. Leadership in the Twenty-First Century, a report by a CFR-sponsored Task Force to assess the future of work and its implications for the US economy and national security.  The Task Force was led by Penny Pritzker, - former Secretary of Commerce and founder and chair of PSP Partners, and by John Engler, - former Governor of Michigan and interim President of Michigan State University.

Their comprehensive report, - over 150 pages and 276 citations, - explored in great depth the changing nature of work as global competition and advanced technologies like AI, robotics, and smart IoT devices transform jobs and careers.  It states right up front that “The most important challenge facing the United States - given the seismic forces of innovation, automation, and globalization that are changing the nature of work - is to create better pathways for all Americans to adapt and thrive.  The country’s future as a stable, strong nation willing and able to devote the necessary resources and attention to meeting international challenges depends on rebuilding the links among work, opportunity, and economic security.”

For much of the 20th century, technology and globalization helped lead America to its leadership position in the world stage.  Underpinning this US leadership was the American Dream, - the promise that anyone can get ahead and achieve success and prosperity through talent and hard work.  But this promise has been eroding for decades.  For many of its citizens, the American Dream has been steadily disappearing.

Technology advances have led to massive innovations and efficiencies, enabling companies to get the same work done with significantly fewer people.  At the same time, many US-headquartered companies are truly global, doing business all over the world.  Beyond outsourcing jobs to countries with lower labor costs they’ve been investing and adding jobs where the demand is highest, - which has often been in faster growing emerging markets.

The US thus faces two major challenges: “creating new work opportunities, better career paths, and higher incomes for its people, while developing a workforce that will ensure U.S. competitive success in a global economy that will continue to be reshaped by technology and trade.” 

The 2018 Inclusive Internet Index

Earlier this year, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) published the Inclusive Internet Index 2018.  Now in its second year, the Index analyzes and compares the current state of the Internet across 86 countries, ranging from advanced to developing economies and covering 91% of the world’s population.  Its key objective is to help policymakers understand the key factors necessary for the wide, inclusive use of the Internet in their respective countries.

Countries are evaluated based on 54 indicators organized around four major categories:

• Availability,  which captures the quality of breadth of the infrastructure available for Internet access, including network availability, access points for landline and mobile connections, and the basic electricity infrastructure needed to support Internet connectivity in urban and rural areas.
• Affordability, which measures the cost of Internet access relative to income, the competitive environment for wireless and broadband operators and the measures taken to decrease costs and promote access.
• Relevance, which looks at the availability of Internet content in the local language(s) and the value of being connected to get access to relevant services like news, entertainment, health advice and business and financial information.
• Readiness, which examines the capacity to take advantage of accessing the Internet, including level of literacy, educational attainment, cultural acceptance, privacy and security, and trust in the sources of online information.

Each country is assigned a score for each of the four categories, as well as an overall index score. 

The Impact of AI on R&D and Innovation

For the past couple of centuries, general-purpose technologies (GPTs) have been the key drivers of productivity and economic growth, - thanks to their rapid improvements in price and performance, pervasive applications, and ability to spur complementary innovations across a wide variety of industries.  The steam engine, electricity and the internal combustion engine are prominent examples of GPTs in the 18th and 19th century.  More recently, semiconductors, computers and the Internet have led to the digital revolution of the past several decades.

Beyond innovations in existing sectors, the rapidly improving price/performance of GPTs have led over time to the creation of whole new applications and industries.  For example, the steady declines in the price of electricity-generated power and the improvement in the efficiency of electric motors led to the radical transformation of manufacturing in the early part of the 20th century with the advent of the assembly line.  It also led to the creation of the consumer appliance industry, e.g., refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines.  Similarly, as the semiconductor industry took off, it led to the historical transition from the industrial economy of the past two centuries to our ongoing digital economy.

How about artificial intelligence?  Beyond its use by leading edge technology companies, we’re still in the early stages of AI deployment.  It’s only been in the last few years that major advances in machine learning have taken AI from the lab to early adopters in the marketplace.  While considerable innovations and investments are required for its wider deployment, AI is likely to become one of the most important GPTs in the 21st century. 

Harnessing the Collective Intelligence of Humans and Machines

For over a decade, MIT professor Thomas Malone has been conducting pioneering research on the collective intelligence of groups.  Malone is the founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, and has authored and co-authored a number of seminal articles on the subject.  A few weeks ago, Malone published Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together, - a book that nicely explains the concept of collective intelligence and how our increasingly capable machines are now complementing the intelligence of groups of people.  The book illustrates these concepts with a wide variety of examples and case studies.

He defines a supermind as “a group of individuals acting in ways that seem intelligent.”  A supermind has measurable properties just as individual do.  It can have a life of its own beyond those of its individuals constituents.  And, as Malone points out, throughout history, groups of people working together as superminds have been responsible for the vast majority of human achievements.